With the progress of the electronic technology, most office works rely on the functions of the copy machine, the fax machine, the printer, the scanner or the multi-function product, and such office machines become the indispensable equipments in the office. Generally, the office machine has a paper feeding mechanism, and the paper is placed on the paper feeding mechanism so as to be fed into the interior of the office machine for copying, faxing, printing or scanning.
Please refer to FIG. 1(a), which is an exploded view showing the conventional paper feeding mechanism. As shown in FIG. 1(a), the conventional paper feeding mechanism 10 comprises a paper feeding body 11, two adjusting boards 12, two racks 13 and a gear 14. Via the transmission of the racks 13 and the gear 14, the right and left adjusting boards 12 can be moved simultaneously and symmetrically so as to have a proper paper feeding width in response to the size of the paper and feed the paper smoothly.
The assembling process of the conventional paper feeding mechanism is described as follows. First, the protruding fastener 121 (as shown in FIG. 1(b)) at the back surface of the adjusting board 12 is penetrated through the corresponding groove 111 on the paper feeding body 11, and the rack 13 is engaged with the corresponding protruding fastener 121 of the adjusting board 12. Then, the two racks 13 are meshed with the gear 14, so that when one of the two adjusting boards 12 is moved toward one side by the user, the other adjusting board 12 will be moved toward the opposite direction automatically at the same time via the rotation of the gear 14 (as shown in FIG. 1(b)).
Through the cooperation of the racks 13 and the gear 14, the two adjusting boards 12 of the conventional paper feeding mechanism 10 can be simultaneously moved toward the opposite directions. However, when assembling the two adjusting boards 12 onto the grooves 11 of the paper feeding body 11, the insertion positions of the protruding fasteners 121 of the adjusting boards 12 may not precisely correspond to each other, and thus, the misalignment defect sometimes occurs after the racks 13 are engaged with the protruding fasteners 121 of the adjusting boards 12 and meshed with the gear 14. In other words, the width from the center (where the gear 14 is located) to the right adjusting board 12 is not equal to that from the center to the left adjusting board 12. As a result, the paper will be mispositioned and not confined to the range which is able to be scanned or printed when the paper is fed into the office machine. Hence, the copying, faxing, scanning or printing quality will be affected, and even more, parts of the contents on the paper may not be copied, faxed, scanned or printed.
Besides, since the pitch of the rack 13 is fixed, the conventional paper feeding mechanism cannot be finely adjusted. In addition, the applied force on the right side is not equal to that on the left side, so one of the two adjusting boards frequently gets stuck. Moreover, the conventional paper feeding mechanism has many assembling components and the assembling process thereof is complicated.
Therefore, it is required to provide a new paper feeding mechanism to overcome the defects of the above described prior art.